October 1929.
The American economic crisis had, in the end, spread to other parts of the world. Britain was the first to be affected, which came as no surprise. The British economy was closely tied to America's, so when the American economy fell into crisis, Britain was inevitably the first to be swept up in it.
For a long time, the United States had been Britain's largest trading partner. American manufactured goods and agricultural products were exported in vast quantities to Britain and its colonies, while Britain in turn exported technology and capital to America. As the world's foremost colonial power, Britain also sold enormous amounts of agricultural and mineral raw materials to the United States.
The relationship between America and Britain at this time was very much like that between the United States and the Far East Empire in a previous life. Only now, America was the industrial producer and Britain the consumer. Once the American economic crisis erupted and industry collapsed, Britain naturally suffered along with it.
In finance, Britain had invested the most in America. Now that America's financial sector had collapsed, British financial institutions such as stock markets and banks also went bankrupt one after another as their capital chains snapped.
In industry, large numbers of American factories went bankrupt and cut production capacity. The many British raw-material suppliers upstream could no longer secure orders, and their operations fell into difficulty.
Britain's situation was now terrible. Yet in truth, its economic troubles had not come "out of the blue"; they had merely added frost upon snow.
Ever since the end of the First World War, Britain's economy had remained sluggish throughout the entire 1920s. Even before the economic crisis broke out, it had never recovered to its prewar level.
British industry was excessively dependent on traditional